There’s a Trudovik For You!

Published:Pravda TrudaNo. 18, October 1, 1913.

      Signed:V. Ilyin.

      Published according to thePravda Trudatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages432-435.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Zavety[2]is an out-and-out Narodnik,Left-Narodnik, publication with Mr. Chernov himself on the
staff. It is a bulky and serious magazine. And if the celebrated
“family labourprinciple” that all
			      Trudoviks,[1]all Narodniks, including all the Socialist-Revolutionaries, have constantly
on their lips is to be found anywhere it is in this magazine.

Somepeople even assert that the “family labour principle” is a
socialist principle, and that its theoreticians are socialists.

Letus see how Mr. S. Zak, a Left Narodnik who has made a special study
of the question of industrial capitalism, discusses the “family
labourprinciple” in industry.

Mr.S. Zak distinguishes three types of industry:
(1) “family labour” industry;
(2) “transitional” industry which stands midway between “family labour”
and capitalist industry, and
(3) capitalist industry. Enterprises employing over 50 workers he
classifies as capitalist; those employing from 11 to 50 workers come under
the heading “transitional industry” andthose employing no more than
10he classifies as “family labour” industry.

Whydoes he classify the last-named enterprises as “family labour”?
The reason, if you please, is that “since these undertakings do not employ
on the average even one clerk and one technician per undertaking, it is
absurd to say that they are capitalist undertakings”.

Thistheory is worthy of a semi-literate clerk, but not of an author
who wants to be regarded as a socialist! Until Mr. Zak and the other
Narodniks have invented “their own”,new, truly Russian political economy, we shall stick to the old view that
capitalism means production ofcommodities, in whichlabour-poweris also transformed into a commodity.

Thisis elementary, and to be ignorant of it is disgraceful. The
Narodniks say that they subscribe to Marx’s theories, and that they are
opposed to bourgeois political economy, but what they offer the public is
nothing more than the views of the most banal philistine, who has learnt
nothing and who repeats scraps of bourgeois phrases, such as: if the owner
has an “office”, he is a capitalist. But if my plant is a small one, how
can I be a capitalist? I am a working man!

Thedefence of such views in the press is a rejection of the science of
political economy, it is the defence of ignorance.

Capitalistsmay be small or big, foolish or clever, but this is not a
criterion of capitalism. Capitalism means producingcommoditiesand hiring wage-labour.

Inthe opinion of our Narodnik another criterion of “family labour”
industry is—do the members of the owner’s family take part in the work?
Anybody who is familiar with the rudiments of political economy knows that
family labour is typical ofpetty-bourgeoisindustry. Exalting. the petty bourgeoisie with the title of “family
labour” industry shows a complete failure to understand what socialism is.

Hereare Mr. Zak’s own figures. For every group of 100 factories, we
find on the average the following numbers of members of owners’ families
employed:
(1) 28 in the factories employing up to 3 workers;
(2) 34 in the factories employing 4 to 5 workers;
(3) 22 in the factories employing 6 to 10 workers.

Our“neo-Narodnik” is splendid, is he not? He himself quotes figures
which show that wage-labourpredominates, and yet he calls it
“family labour” industry!

Mr.Zakskips over the returns of various industrial censuses, waxes
enthusiastic over the “numerous” “working” masters he finds, and
asserts that this proves the “unsoundness of the orthodox theory”—as
the Narodniks ironically call Marx’s doctrine. We shall quote the complete
figures of the German census returns, to which Mr. Zak primarily refers. We
shall take industry in the broad sense of the term, including commerce and
transport.

Lookclosely at this picture of capitalism in industry. One-man,
petty-bourgeois workshops are very “numerous”:one and a half million. Theirshareof industry?One-tenthof the workers andnoneof the machinery,
either steam or electrically driven!

Whatabout the big capitalists? They account forone-hundredthof the factories, but they employ nearly two-fifths (39 per cent) of the
total number of workers and haveover three-fourths(75–77
per cent) of the total machinery.

Everyintelligent worker will see at once that these figures fully
confirm his everyday experience: the existence of a vast number of
miserable petty bourgeois crushed by capital, and themost complete
predominanceof a handful of large capitalist enterprises.

Toproceed. The statistics, so hopelessly garbled by this “Left”
Narodnik, reveal a very rapid growth of capitalism and the elimination of
small production. We shall compare the returns of three German censuses,
that of 1882, 1895 and 1907 (the last). So as not to weary the reader with
figures, we shall take only the most important of them; we shall compare
the one-man workshops with the capitalist plants, taking medium and large
together.

Twenty–fiveyears ago the one–man workshop owners constituted the
majority of the masters (three–fifths). Now they constitute the minority
(two–fifths). Formerly, they employed one–fourth of the total number of
workers; they now employ only one–tenth.

Onthe other hand, the share of the capitalist plants shows a rapid
increase. Twenty-five years ago they employed only a minority of the
workers (two-fifths), but they now employ themajority, nearly
two-thirds of the total number of workers (63 per cent). And we have
already seen that the concentration of steam, to say nothing of
electrically drivenmachinery, in the hands of a small number of
capitalists isfar greaterthan the concentration of workers.

Thus,the industrial censuses of the free and rapidly developing
countries are the best proof of the correctness of Marx’s
theory. Capitalism rules everywhere. Everywhere it is squeezing out small
production. Everywhere the masses of peasants and small artisans and
handicraftsmen are being ruined. Big capital forces down and crushes the
small master in a thousand ways that are still poorly reflected in
statistics. There is no salvation for the small master. His only way of
escape is to join the struggle of the proletariat.

Fromfirst to last the theory of the “family labour principle” and
“family labour industry” is a repetition of the old bourgeois prejudices,
prejudices that are being shattered all the time by the experience of every
country.

Intrying to prove to the workers that the capitalist or small master
who employs from five to ten wage-workers is a “working master”, the Left
Narodniks only reveal their own bourgeois nature.

[1]SeeNote 95.—Ed.

[2]Zavety(Testament)—a legal Socialist-Revolutionary
literary and political monthly published in St. Petersburg from April 1912
to July 1914.